my views on the local news in Minnesota

July 2008

July 30, 2008

Minneapolis' lakes belong to the citizens, or at least that's what I
always thought. But one Minneapolitan swimmer who wanted to swim across
Lake Nokomis got a ticket. He was in training for a triathlon and I
thought our big government wanted to fight obesity and all but maybe
not so much if you want to be a triathlon swimmer.

He was cited for misdemeanor swimming and faces a maximum penalty of
90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. Not only that, but because the
swimmer in training is also a physician, he'll have to report the
violation every time he applies to renew his license to practice
medicine. Does this make sense?

With fewer than 20 legislative days before the new
fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the entire appropriations process has
largely ground to a halt because of the ham-handed fighting that
followed Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and
gas exploration. And after promising fairness and open debate, Pelosi
has resorted to hard-nosed parliamentary devices that effectively bar
any chance for Republicans to offer policy alternatives.

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she
says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate
trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

July 27, 2008

After
the Indymac takeover by FDIC, many are wondering how their bank is
doing and whether they will be left to rely on FDIC insurance to cover
their deposits. Here's a website
that publishes bank ratings. You can read the report on your bank.
Banks are rated by capitalization, asset quality, profitability,
liquidity and stability.

July 18, 2008

Six years of working with the Australian Greenhouse Office on
efforts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol has led former alarmist Dr.
David Evans to conclude that "we know for sure that carbon emissions
are not a significant cause of the global warming." His article, published in the Australian, lays out his reasoning. Here's part of it:

I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building
models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist
who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures
Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change
and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and
agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant
physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming
debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions
caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the
old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain
when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the
scientific community were working together and lots of science research
jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of
government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well,
I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that
carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the
evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and
was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes
famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you
do, sir?"

Here's an interesting article about Russian scientists who deny that the Kyoto Protocol reflects a consensus view of the world scientific community. The article gives this explanation of why Putin signed the Kyoto Protocol:

When four years ago, then President Vladimir Putin was weighing his options on the Kyoto Protocol the Russian Academy of Sciences strongly advised him to reject it as having “no scientific foundation.” He ignored the advice and sent the Kyoto pact to Parliament for purely political reasons: Moscow traded its approval of the Kyoto Protocol for the European Union’s support for Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation. Russian endorsement was critical, as without it the Kyoto Protocol would have fallen through due to a shortage of signatories. It did not cost much for Russia to join the Kyoto Protocol since its emission target was set at the level of 1990, that is, before the Russian economy crashed following the break-up of the Soviet Union. According to some projections, Russia will not exceed its target before 2017. Notwithstanding this, the Russian scientific community is vocal in its opposition to the Kyoto process.

The article gives another example of how politics and profits play into these environmental programs:

Russian researchers compare the Kyoto Protocol to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which called for phasing out Freon-12 as a preferred refrigerant. It has since been proved, says Dr. Golubchikov, that chlorine-containing Freon-12 destroys ozone only in laboratory conditions whereas in the atmosphere, it interacts with hydrogen and falls back to Earth as acid rain before it can harm ozone.

The Montreal Protocol brought billions of dollars in profits for U.S. DePont, which held global patent rights for Freon-134, an alternative refrigerant that does not interact with ozone. “Within 10 years of the Montreal Protocol the output of refrigeration compressors in the U.S. increased by 60 per cent, whereas in Europe it declined by a similar proportion. In Russia, which accounted for a quarter of the global market of refrigerants, the industry ground to a complete stop,” says Yevgeny Utkin, Secretary of Russia’s Inter-Agency Commission for Climate Change.

I've heard talk about how Dakota County should take a leadership position on climate change. With so many unknowns about such proposals, it seems rather foolhardy to me. It's instructive to look at what's been happening in the European Union.

Business Week reported that the first phase of the trading scheme resulted in higher prices and higher oil company profits, while CO2 emissions were estimated to have risen 1.1% in 2007.

Today I read that in the last twelve months, the price to purchase the right to pump carbon into the EU atmosphere rose about 30%, according to the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig. Spiegel reportson the effect on some German companies:

According to calculations by the Federal Statistical Office and the Institute for Applied Ecology, a number of other German companies from industrial sectors other than the cement industry will relocate at least part of their businesses because of the new carbon trading scheme -- either because of the rising cost of permits, or because of higher electricity prices.

"In Germany the raw-material chemical industry, companies from the iron and steel sector, lime producers, aluminium producers and refineries might be affected," Franzjosef Schafhausen, the Environment Ministry's undersecretary, said at the Bonn conference. Felix Matthes, coordinator for energy and climate protection at the Institute for Applied Ecology, added: "The CO2 price signal prompts shifts in production and investment. Yet it doesn't lead to lower overall emissions, as the production and investment at the company's new sites will not be subject to CO2 pricing, either now or in the near future."

So this carbon trading scheme raises prices for consumers, forces businesses to move to other countries that don't have carbon trading provisions, resulting in job losses but no lowering of greenhouse gas emissions.

Who wins under this?

According to the Spiegel article, it's the government. The German Finance Ministry is reporting millions in revenues from the program. Whether this influx of cash will cover the fall in tax revenues from potential job losses that might result from the trading scheme is yet to be determined.

July 17, 2008

The American Physical Society, an organization
representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on
climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members
disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring
public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership
of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming
"incontrovertible."

July 15, 2008

Got a catastrophe? If it's not GWB's fault it must be caused by global warming.

That, apparently, is how the brain cells of Massachussets' Congressman Edward Markey work. He told high school students gathered at the U.S. Capitol last week that climate change caused Hurricane Katrina and the conflict in Darfur, which led to the “black hawk down” battle between U.S. troops and Somali rebels.

Never mind those scientists that say the earth is now cooling. The momentum of the global warming crisis-fighting machine cannot be slowed down.

Now they're counting cow burps and changing the cows' diets to try to get them to emit less greenhouse gases. Here's a picture of one of the experimental cows with a big pink tank on its back to collect all of the burps.

If I made this stuff up nobody would believe it. But it's actually happening, and people are taking it seriously.

No doubt this will be used to argue that we should all become
vegans. I wonder whether this new discovery will result in less food to
feed hungry people, as public opinion is turned against gassy cows and
meat eaters by those whose religious fervor drives them to shame us for
having the audacity to want to feed our families and maintain our
standard of living.